Avatars for Atmosphere

Additionally, collecting and trading Poser Pro Pack custom avatars in the various worlds has become a popular endeavor with our users. To see a few other great animated 3D avatars from Pro Pack in action, check out the Atmosphere world of our parent company Egisys AG at the following URL: http://www.egisys.de/ and browse its 3D world.

Steve CooperPresident, Curious Labs

The timing of the "Walk This Way" Techwatch article on pg. 16 of the July 2001 issue was perfect. Several days afterward, I saw the animated movie Shrek. The level of realism in CG animation that has been achieved today is truly amazing in all areas except motion. In Shrek, the CG characters looked fantastically real until they moved. By far, the last hurtle seems to be getting the motion to look as real as the rest of the visual aspects.

John JohnstoneOakhurst, NJ

I concur with Mr. David Faibush, whose letter about benchmarks, "Apples to Oranges?" appeared on pg. 8 of the July issue. I say this on the basis of your review of the IBM IntelliStation M Pro on pg. 68 of the same issue. When I first glanced at it, I noticed that the benchmarks showed the P4 processor to be about two times faster than both a single and a dual PIII-based system. In fact, it showed the dual-PIII 1ghz system to be slower than the 933mhz PIII system.

Upon further inspection, I found the reason for this: The review's benchmarks are seriously skewed. First, the benchmark program apparently does not support multi-processor systems correctly. Or, as was stated in the article, it's not optimized for them yet. Second, these were graphics tests, in which the component being tested is the graphics accelerator in the system. As stated in the article, the PIII systems used an Elsa Gloria II graphics card and the P4 used a Diamond Fire GL2 card. Here we are with apples and oranges again. We're comparing an old VW beetle to the latest Ferrari sports car. There's no way the Gloria II is going to win.

The only saving point was the formZ benchmark, which clearly showed that a dual 1ghz PIII system is much faster than a single P4 system and that the same P4 system is only slightly faster than the 933mhz P3 system. Of course, then it showed a CPU/graphics test that demonstrated the P4 to be about 3 times faster than both of the other systems.

If you're going to tout the power of a processor, then at least run it against similar systems with different processors-not systems with vastly different hardware. At the very least, the Fire GL2 card could have been moved to the other two test systems to afford better and more accurate benchmark results.

Jason 'XenoPhage' FrisvoldEngine/Technology ProgrammerLehighton, PA

Moe Merell is the correct spelling of the name of the lead digital character animator at Disney cited in the Atlantis feature "Staying Tooned" (pg. 32, July 2001 issue).

We welcome any insights you have to offer that would further our readers' understanding of topics discussed in this issue, or that concern the computer graphics industry in general. We may edit your comments to conform to our style and space requirements. Please address letters to: